Mangrove Classification (Landsat 8)

Mangrove ecosystems are one of the most important coastal ecosystems and serve many purposes, including biodiversity support, shoreline protection, and environmental sustainability. Mangroves can be found along tropical and subtropical coasts and serve as habitat and breeding ground for numerous birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and other types of animals. Moreover, the root system of mangroves helps to stabilize the soil and prevent erosion while providing a buffer for storm surges, heavy waves, cyclones, and tsunamis.

Unfortunately, mangroves become vulnerable under the threat of climate change, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, pollution, and intensive coastal development. Coastal development activities such as land reclamation, aquaculture, urban development, and infrastructure construction can lead to considerable losses of mangrove ecosystems and fragmentation. As a consequence, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, and carbon storage decrease, which adversely affects the livelihood of communities relying on coastal ecosystems.

Therefore, it is extremely important to monitor the condition and changes in distribution and area of mangroves. Field surveys, however, can take much time and money, and it is rather complicated to conduct them in large-scale and remote areas. Remote sensing, satellite imagery, aerial imagery, and geospatial technologies provide a convenient tool to survey the condition of mangrove ecosystems in large-scale regions.

Deep learning can be of even more assistance in the field of mangrove conservation as it is capable of automatically recognizing and classifying mangrove vegetation on the basis of images taken with high resolution. This is possible due to the analysis of vast amounts of remote sensing information that helps to track changes in the mangrove cover, to determine the degraded areas, and to conduct assessments of the ecosystem.

Thus, the use of deep learning technology together with remote sensing and GIS is a scalable method of mangrove protection. Monitoring information will be useful for researchers, environmental groups, governments, and coastal management to identify problematic zones, to assess their actions in the area of conservation of the mangrove forest, and to make the right decisions.